


Any Time is a Good Time for Pink Daisies

by natmerc



Category: The Listener (TV)
Genre: Gen, Gen Fic, Light-Hearted, POV Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-23
Updated: 2009-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-05 01:47:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/36445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natmerc/pseuds/natmerc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Toby can't always help but read minds sometimes, and today he's tracking down the mind that's sending him pink daisies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Any Time is a Good Time for Pink Daisies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Null](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Null).



Somebody was thinking about pink daisies.

Ever get ear worms? Most people have them. I get them too, but what's worse is mind worms. Someone in the hospital was thinking about pink daisies and they weren't being polite about having it get into my head.

Not that they knew they were doing it. There's no mind-readers group to protect me by buying advertising space to tell people to guard their thoughts and not to project when they're happy or sad or mad or just angry at getting a parking ticket.

That's my life. That's been most of my life. These days, I'm pretty good at blocking out the everyday thoughts and just open up when I'm looking for something. It has to be important though. Saving somebody's life, getting information to help my sorta-friend Detective Charlie Marks with a case, or figure out how to get back into the good graces of my sort've-off-again-at-the-moment girlfriend Olivia. Getting back into Olivia's good graces is important – and not just because I'm a 25 year old male and would love to have sex with her again, she's a friend too, and I like it when my friends like me – it's easier to be around them.

Two ambulance calls this morning, both without much trouble, at least for my ambulance partner, Oz and me. One, an elderly woman who'd fallen and might've broken her hip. She was in the X-ray department right now getting it checked out. She had been lucky, living alone and falling like that, she could've been in big trouble, but she'd been carrying her cell phone and called 911 when she couldn't get up again.

The other call was for a choking kid, and those could be bad, but a neighbor had known the Heimlich maneuver and the little girl had been breathing again when we'd arrived. The Mom had insisted on going to the hospital, and that had been good – saved me from having to talk her into going to check to toddler for broken ribs, or rather, having my partner Oz talk to her since the Mom didn't speak any English and I didn't speak whatever it was she spoke. Oz was good at languages, fluent in English and Turkish and could make himself understood in a scattershot of other ones. The little girl, a sweet little thing with long black hair and dark eyes had cried softly, almost sobbing, the whole trip, cradled in her mother's arms.

You wouldn't think that would be good, listening to crying the whole way, but the girl wasn't screaming – there's a world of difference between crying and screaming, and as long as she was still crying, she was still breathing. Oz had stayed in the front, ready to head into the back if there was any trouble, but keeping out of the Mom's way so she'd be more comfortable. The Mom was worried, but not panicked. Those emotions had been blasting out from her mind. I'd picked them up along with a string of replayed mental loops of her daughter playing in the street, picking up toys from the ground and throwing them across the little patch of green grass as far as her toddler arms could throw them, and then, talking with her neighbour, turning back and seeing her little girl on her hands and knees, trying to scream but not being able to.

Sounds bad, right? But paramedics get all sorts of calls, and these could both turn out all right. I've had people yelling in my head my whole life, and if you don't keep a good attitude about it, you can mess your own head up bad real quick. That fallen grandmother? On the outside, she'd been pretty quiet and polite, but inside her head she'd been letting loose a blue streak of curse words. I think I'd learned a couple new ones.

Pink daisies. Pink daisies in a blue vase and a feeling of love and amusement.

It was my lunch break now, and I was back in the hospital. The mind worm was persistent, and I was wandering the halls, trying to track down the perpetrator. Curious as a cat, that's me. Oz liked to come up with entertaining plans for making money and painting the town red, only some of which involved me reading minds, but I'd rather figure things out than make big bucks.

I know. I've seen the movies and the after-school specials and the straight-to-DVDs – if you've got magical or psychic powers you can't tell people or you'll end up in a white lab with scientists threatening to cut you apart.

I was careful. Okay, I was careful sometimes. I still hadn't told Olivia, although she suspected something -- part of the reason we'd broken up was because she knew I had secrets I kept from her. I also knew that she was a careful and private person, and if I had told her, we'd have a 99.94% chance of breaking up. So we'd broken up anyway. Women say that they want you to read their minds, but they don't. I learned that in high school. This way, Olivia was still a friend, even if I'd lost bed-rights, and I wanted to keep at least that much.

These days Oz knew, and Ray, Dr. Ray Mercer, had known forever, and now Detective Marks knew too. That's probably enough for now. I was whistling softly as I walked down the hallway, and smiled at Angie, a cute pint-sized brown-haired nurse that I'd once seen wrestle a disoriented man twice her size back into his room. She smiled back. She thought I was cute.

Pink daisies in a blue vase with small white flowers on it. A rustle of white sheets. Sense of warmth and satisfaction.

I blinked. Of course.

It wasn't like the mind worm got stronger as I headed in the right direction, it was more that it grew fuller, with added textures and tones.

I peeked into the room and saw the daisies; big, garish plastic ones that filled out the blue vase. There was a woman lying in the bed, drowsing. Her red hair looked a bit tangled on the pillow, and there was a big, no make that a really big guy sitting in the waiting chair by the bed, his hands almost making the small baby he held disappear from sight. He was rocking the baby gently and humming.

"Sorry," I said. "Just looking for someone."

The woman looked up and her eyes focused on me. She was tired, a bit sore and a bit worried, but overlaying all that and swamping them out almost completely, was a feeling of happiness. It washed over me, like she wanted to hug the whole world and I was just the person she could touch right now.

Some days, I wouldn't trade being a mind reader for anything.


End file.
